The Importance of travel
Recently I took a break...well from shooting fine art and landscapes that is. I traveled to Madrid Spain for video production. I Was flown out by a client for just shy of 2 weeks and filmed on location for the duration of the trip. I did have a few days off but all in all, I was still working from the time I landed to the time I left. I learned a lot from this trip, that I am far more capable than I ever thought I was and that I really need to take more breaks in my life.
This trip was going to be a challenge for me. I had never traveled with my camera equipment before nor had I really filmed in a foreign place like this. It was quite stressful traveling with all my gear, wondering if I had forgotten a key component or what would happen if something broke. I can tell you now that it's all over it was actually quite uneventful aside from a power outage and I came very over-prepared as usual. But the focus is this short post isn't going to be about packing for trips, what to do when things go wrong or what I learned from such a challenging event in my life. I was this post to be about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone and pushing the boundaries of what you think you are capable of.
Since I was a teen I Have always wanted to travel for work. I would dream of the day that I got to sly out with a bag full of camera gear fully paid for by someone else. This trip for me was a milestone in my career, I finally had an all-expenses-paid work trip like those big-time producers and filmmakers. The lead up to this moment was filled with excitement and nervous days. I love what I do but that is because I am never far from safety. If I have a bad day in the backcountry or a morning without any wildlife who cares? I can always come back tomorrow or the next weekend. But when you only have a set limit of gear, time and tools at your disposal the room for error becomes much smaller and the difficulty increases.
Its this increase of difficulty that sets me into a rhythm, I find that under pressure I love to perform because while I am very stressed and my mind is flooded with a checklist of everything I need to do I see the structure and check this in front of me. Working down that list, fighting through the stress and seeing my memory cards fill up as the days move forward is calming to me. A lot of people get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to do but I seem to thrive in it. I felt very at home in Madrid, with a very secure sense of duty on all the days I had to film. I am the expert that has been chosen for this tasked so I might as well feel that roll and live in it. I think this is something a lot of people can relate to, that we can start to feel like imposters in our own shoes even though we have the experience to back it all up.
I think that is the greater message I want everyone to understand about this trip and what I gained from it. we are all way more capable than we think we are and even those of us that are in these roles we look up to and dream about. None of us really know what we are doing, we are just following one good feeling after another and trying to keep everything we do under our control and closer to our end vision than the last time we did it. When I first started doing video production I was always trying to impress my clients and ask them for their approval. Deep down I knew that the only person I wanted to impress was myself and that there were things I Was doing in the production I felt the client would want even tho I didn't necessarily agree with it. But the older I have gotten and the more I have learned about myself the more I end up just doing what I want and not caring about anyone else's feelings or desires.
Traveling and checking a dream off of my list really set this in stone for me. It was so far outside of my comfort zone that all I could do was rest on my talent and experience. I had no safety net, no support and certainly no way of going any direction but forward. It taught me that I need to quit playing anything in my life safe and that even when I am surrounded by comfort I need to charge forward and lean into my biggest fears. I read in a book recently that to make it in life you need to take a jump first and the net will appear sort of mentality. This trip was exactly that for me. I Was free falling with no idea how I Would land and now that it is all said and done I want to find something higher to jump from with an even smaller net. I am very proud of myself for taking this on and I cannot wait to see where my life will take me next.
